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Ms. Rachel
American YouTuber and educator From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Rachel Anne Accurso[2] (née Griffin; born November 30, 1982),[citation needed] better known as Ms. Rachel, is an American educator, YouTuber, social media personality, and singer-songwriter. She is best known for creating the eponymous YouTube series Ms. Rachel (originally known as Songs for Littles), a children's music series focused on language development for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
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Early and personal life
Accurso (née Griffin) was born in Biddeford, Maine, and raised in Sanford, Maine. She was raised, along with her sister, by a single mother.[3] As a teenager and young adult, she worked a variety of jobs, including working for a summer program for disabled children, teaching music to refugee children through the Boys & Girls Club in Maine, and working as a music teacher at a public preschool in New York City before starting her YouTube channel.[3][4]
She attended Sanford High School, where she participated in theatre, and the University of Southern Maine.[5] She earned a master's degree in music education from New York University in 2016[6] and a second master's degree in early childhood education from the American College of Education.[3][7]
She met her husband, Broadway music director and composer Aron Accurso, at a Unitarian Church in New York in 2010, and married him in July 2016.[8][3] Their first child was born in 2018.[3] On April 8, 2025, Accurso announced that she and her husband had a second child via surrogacy.[1][9]
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Career
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Accurso started her YouTube channel in 2019 under the name Ms. Rachel. She and her husband created the channel in response to the lack of media resources for their son who had a speech delay and did not say his first word until he was two years old.[10][4] She created Songs for Littles, a children's music YouTube series made up of a combination of classic children's songs, such as nursery rhymes, and original music for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.[11] It was originally started as an in-person class led by Accurso and was inspired by the techniques of her son's early childhood intervention speech therapist with a focus on language development milestones and inclusive subject matter.[10][4][12] The channel became especially popular starting in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and has over fifteen million subscribers as of 2025[update].[13]
Songs for Littles features Accurso as the star, with her signature outfit of a pink shirt with overalls and a headband,[14] alongside diverse cast and crew members including actress and teacher Keisha Gilles, diversity and inclusion consultant Alexa Smith, speech therapist Frida Matute, animator and editor Beth Jean, singer-songwriter Jules Hoffman,[14] actress Natalie Kaye Clater, and Accurso's husband Aron, the last of whom writes and arranges music for the series and operates two puppet characters named Georgie and Herbie.[4][12][7] Accurso also became popular on TikTok as Ms. Rachel, where she had over two and a half million followers by March 2023.[4][15]
Accurso's shows are based in research in childhood development. Michael Long, an American religious studies professor, and biographer of Fred Rogers, has drawn comparison of Accurso's work to Rogers' show, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.[3]
Accurso took a break from TikTok in February 2023, citing her mental health.[10] The break was assumed by fans to be in response to backlash from some parents on the platform against Accurso's nonbinary co-star Jules Hoffman for using they/them pronouns.[15] That same month, Accurso returned to TikTok while she and Songs for Littles were signed to Creative Artists Agency.[14][7] In June 2024, Accurso received backlash and a boycott campaign from conservatives after she posted a video on TikTok wishing viewers a happy Pride Month.[16]
A Ms. Rachel toy line was announced in August 2024, which included a Ms. Rachel doll.[17][18] The popularity of the doll led to knockoffs being sold prompting Accurso to post a guide on how to identify the real doll.[19] Netflix premiered four compilation episodes of Ms. Rachel on January 27, 2025.[20]
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Fundraising and activism
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Accurso announced a fundraising campaign in a video published in May 2024 to her TikTok and Instagram accounts. She offered to make videos on Cameo, a website that allows users to pay for a personalized video with a message of their choice, with all revenue from the videos going to Save the Children's emergency fund, mentioning the Gaza Strip, Sudan, Ukraine, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[21] In a couple of hours, she had raised over $50,000 from 500 Cameo requests, which she later paused to record the requested videos. She would lose her voice from recording all of the videos, saying that "I wanted to make each video really long and special," and that she couldn't bear the thought of a child being disappointed.[3][21] Accurso stated that she was bullied online in relation to her fundraising for the children of Gaza, stating that she cares "deeply for all children".[22] She soon disabled comments on her YouTube and Instagram accounts.[21]
Accurso has often posted on Instagram about the conditions suffered by children in Gaza due to the war in Gaza, as well as Israel's bombing and blockade of the Gaza Strip. She has called for an end to the bombing and blockade, and for the delivery of humanitarian aid to the civilians and children in Gaza who have been forcibly displaced.[23][24] In May 2025, she posted a video of herself singing with a 3-year-old double amputee from Gaza who was brought to the US by the Palestine Children's Relief Fund.[25][26][3] In an interview with Mehdi Hasan, Accurso reaffirmed her support for the children of Gaza, saying that "It’s sad that people try to make it controversial when you speak out for children that are facing immeasurable suffering."[27][28] She told Democracy Now! that "it is difficult to receive criticism, but... that pain will never compare to the pain of not speaking out during a genocide".[25] Accurso has also stated that she would not collaborate with anyone who has not spoken out about Gaza.[29][25] Accurso has also posted on Instagram expressing grief about Israeli families whose children and loved ones were taken hostage by Hamas.[3]
In May 2025, The New York Times printed the unevidenced suggestion from the advocacy group StopAntisemitism that Ms. Rachel was being funded by Hamas.[30][31] Ms. Rachel wrote to The New York Times that "This accusation is not only absurd, it’s patently false," and "caring about children in Gaza is a direct continuation of the work I’ve been doing most of my life. We don’t care about only some of our students because of where those students were born, we care about every one of them."[30] She announced that she was "unsubscribing from The New York Times because of its biased and dehumanizing coverage of Palestinians and Palestine, and its failure to uphold journalistic integrity."[30]
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Awards and nominations
Emmy Awards
Miscellaneous awards
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References
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